


Fork

by MaeChrys



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Death, Loss, M/M, Mourning, pls don't deal with stuff the way dorian deals with stuff?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 10:57:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5705029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaeChrys/pseuds/MaeChrys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And now, you can’t remember what a fork is.<br/>You remember his blond, going white hair, but you can’t remember if they went down his shoulders or right over the collar bones. You remember the thick braid he used to wear over his left ear, but you can’t remember if it was three of four strands.<br/>And the word fork doesn’t mean anything in your mouth now. Fork. Fork.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fork

**Author's Note:**

> The Inquisitor dies in a quest after Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts and Dorian is shattered. Also, some of the dialogues is blatant party banter because I love party banter!  
> "Sorry if feelings" should be an archive warning. -M

Fork. Fork. Fork.  You dangle the damn thing in front of your eyes, mindlessly. You are still sitting down on the floor in the library, without even really noticing the candle melting away over your shoes.  
Fork. Fork. Fork.  
The word doesn’t mean much anymore. You know it’s there, you know it used to hold a meaning. You know those letters, in that order, written in that fancy once sparkled the image of… that, in your head. But they don’t anymore. And yet you know the fork.    
You can’t remember his face. Not the tiny details, at least. Of course, you remember the general feeling, you still know what a fork is. And yet you can’t make up his face, not by memory alone.  You do have a portrait, tiny, important, of him in his Inquisitor Throne. Josephine thought it would have been a good idea to have it made, would have given importance to the role. A message, an idea to spread throughout Thedas.  
He had never liked it.

 _“How long do I have to stay here? Looking menacing is starting to get tiring”_  
_The painter looks up at Josephine, lost, and she just shakes her head “Don’t mind him, serah. The Inquisitor likes to think he’s funny”_  
_“The ways you hurt me, Jos.”_

She came to you with her shoulders low, taking deep breaths one at a time, measuring her steps. She handed you the painting and you looked at it without really seeing. You never really knew how okay she was with what you and him had going. She never completely liked you, she never completely understood why you had decided to join the Inquisition. And you never really wasted away trying to explain it to her. You didn’t mind if she ruled you off as a spoiled complainer. You never minded. “I still had this. I thought you might have wanted it” her accent was strong, rough against her tongue. You never liked the Antivan accent, when they spoke the Trade Tongue. Too vulgar. You never were one for vulgar things.  
The gold frame was heavy and cold in your hands. There was silence, between you. Thick. Uncomfortable.  
“Thank you, Josephine.”  
“You know, if you ever want to talk-“  
“I don’t. But thanks”

And now, you can’t remember what a fork is. Fork. Fork. Fork.  
You remember his blond, going white hair, but you can’t remember if they went down his shoulders or right over the collar bones. You remember the thick braid he used to wear over his left ear, but you can’t remember if it was three of four strands.  
And the word fork doesn’t mean anything in your mouth now. Fork. Fork.

 _What really got you to understand was the smell of winter, the smell of snow and campfires and burning wood, the smell of dust and clouds._  
_“Why is it always so cold? How do you southerners stand this?”_  
_He had almost started to laugh, when you heard the Bull walking behind you “What’s the matter? Not enough slaves around to rub your footsies? Always complaining, you fucking ‘Vints” You curled your lips, trying not to convey as much poison as you would have liked in your words “My footsies are freezing, thank you”_  
_The Bull shrugged and kept on going wherever he was going. Never understood that one. Oddly charming, and yet you would never have admitted it._  
_And yet he had laughed when Bull was gone. “Footsies. He’s rather right, you know? You do have footsies. Not used to walking. Not used to marching”_  
_That, you minded. You didn’t care if it was others making fun of you. You didn’t care if it was others thinking you were a spoiled, posh brat. And yet, if it was him, you did._  
_“In Tevinter we actually have horses. You know, the running kind. They take you were you need to go. On silk saddles.”_  
_“From time to time, I don’t know if what you say about Tevinter is actually true or you just make it up to look high ended” he’s staring down Skyhold, at all the snow, all the ice. All the cold._  
_“I guess you’ll just have to come and see for yourself”_

He never did. He never came to Tevinter, in the end. You never showed him the enchanted fountains, or the palaces, iridescent with lyrium. So much he never saw. You don’t remember what is the Tevene word for fork. Fork. Fork. Fork.  
It has lost all kind of meaning now. It’s just a gibber dangling from your fingers over an out of focus background. You can’t remember which shade of green his eyes were. Sure, they were green. Sure, this fork was made of steel. And yet neither of them has a sense now.  
You don’t want to take the portrait. You don’t want to endure in your own fallibility. You want to remember, you want to see in your head how many lashes his right eye had, just how far out from his hair his ears pointed, what exact shade of pink the scars on his chest were. You want to know what the word fork means.

 _The Winter Palace was all sparkles and marbles and gold and diamonds. A war that struggles to resemble peace. All you’ve known, all your life, is this kind of fake tranquility, so why not dwell in it?_  
_He came at you walking fast, anxious in his formal red attire._  
_“Red isn’t really your colour, amatus” you said, smirking just slightly. You saw his body relax, exhale for a single breath and he shook his head, just- calmer, for a second._  
_“You always know just what to say”_  
_“It’s a gift not many can brag about, and I’ve always lived by the rule of bragging when convenient”_  
_“And this looks convenient to you?”_  
_You circled his waist with an arm, letting him leaning ever so slightly against you. “It’s a ball. If it’s not convenient now, when?”_  
_He snorted, and you made a mental note to remember what that sounded like. Small. Fragile._  
_“This must be all you do, back in Tevinter, right?”_  
_“More or less. There is more blood, as a rule, but I’m only waiting to see when that will show up here”_  
_He took a step from you, looked at you in the eyes, and you thought of how beautiful he was. How that would never have been possible, back home. How, perhaps, that was what a real home looked liked._  
_“Care for a dance?”_  
_“Dancing with the evil magister, in full view of every noble in Orlais? How shocking” “They’ll live”_  
_“You say that now. If you can find me ten silk scarves, I’ve got a dance that will really shock them”_

You almost don’t realize you’ve started crying until you see the tiny, darker spots on the floor, and feel tears streaming down the corner of your eyes.  
He’s gone.  
The Inquisition won, but he’s gone. Forever. There is no Fade, no faith, no mysterious force who will bring him back. He’s gone and you are alone. Again. Forever, this time, because you’ve tasted what you thought you could have never had, and there is no patching it up now. For a single moment you wish this was just another one night stand in Tevinter, when you got the prettiest young boy at the ball and ran away the morning after. You can’t run away from this, there is no window you can escape from and there is no cloak to mask you. You had it, you held it in your hands for a brief moment. And now you want it back.  
You want back all the memories, you want to know what he smelled like exactly, you want to know where his voice sounded. You want to know what forks means, again.  
You want it all, and you want it now.  
So mundane, so not you. So… petty.  
And yet you won’t take that portrait in your hands, you won’t stop to toy with that fork. Fork. Fork. Fork. Fork.  
You get up from the floor and throw the damned fork against the wall with all the strength you have just to hear the noise of steel against bricks. And then, you start punching the wall, against the shelves, and all the books are falling around you _those books it took you so long to gather them do you even remember how horribly disgusting their library was before you came in all that rumors written down on parchment all that bullshit and you managed you catalogued and wrote and searched and roomed all of Thedas just to find what they needed_ and your knuckles are bleeding and you cry and set them all on fire just because you can you are a mage a strong mage you don’t need other people _his eyes are green but what kind of green and his voice was low but not Bull’s low another kind of low softer warmer and his freckles just tiny spots over his nose but how many and how pink and his fingers long but not like yours_ and then everything around you is on fire and burning and destroying and you cry among the flames and it burns it laps your skin and burns burns burns everything around.  
And you stop.  
You stand in the middle of the fire. You look through all the red and gold. Noises behind you are muffled, softened. You can hear Leliana shouting at you, running down the stairs, and Cullen chiming in from below. You don't mind them. They don't matter, right now.  
You walk, slowly, towards the center of the fire, and you grab that fucking fork. It hurts your finger, it’s too hot against your skin, but you hold it and press it hard against your palm. And it burns so much not all the tears you are shedding will ever soothe it.  
And all of a sudden, you have the image. You see him.  
And you remember what fork means.


End file.
